Fun Facts: Volume One

What's that, you say? This isn't a real blog post? Again? Well, too bad. I'm feverishly typing away Chapter Five at the moment and with my writing-ADD I started making a list of things I've noticed about my writing. I find most of them rather humorous, so hopefully you can at least have a laugh this week.

Here goes:

• ·         Despite my self-proclaimed status as grammar nazi, I wholeheartedly believe that when it comes to dialogue, all bets are off. People don’t always speak perfectly. I probably overuse “uhs” and “ums” and “…” as well. I won’t apologize. Except maybe to my first editor.

• ·         If I’m writing from the point of view of a teenager (which is, um, always), I will find some way to get their parents out of the picture, whether it’s through supernatural elements, important jobs, or general whorishness (e.g. Jordan’s mom).

• ·         I didn’t know whorishness was an actual word until Microsoft Word did not put a red squiggly line under it just now.

• ·         I will never just give you the first person narrator’s name. You gotta work for it, wait for the right character to say it. Sometimes you have to wait for chapter two.

• ·         I live under the impression (or delusion) that every male character I’ve ever created has no chest hair and wears boxers. And they’re circumcised. There, I said it.

• ·         I have a tendency to occasionally write prose in a poetic fashion. And even if it’s beautiful, it never works. So let’s just say that rereading Lolita for inspiration right now is not helping as much as I had hoped. WHERE ARE ALL THESE FLOWERY WORDS COMING FROM? DAMN YOU HUMBERT!

• ·         I feel as though I have a translator in my brain that takes what I want to write and changes it into what a teenage boy would say. My favorite example is a line of dialogue that started as “please don’t speak,” and in about five seconds became, “just shut up, ok?” This translator was not always so great and my original strategy was just to swear a lot.

• ·         What isn’t so easy is having a word that seems PERFECT for the situation but then I realize that my narrator wouldn’t know or use that word. So if anybody has a dumbed down word that means “pretense,” please let me know.

• ·         I’m crazy about making playlists for my books. There are official ones, unofficial ones. And if you happened to make your way into the Borders I used to work at that one Thursday night during liquidation, you were poisoned with the playlist for my current book because I was allowed to take over the CD player. I will now enjoy an evil laugh with my muse.

• ·         He just said that he doesn’t have an evil laugh, but that all of his laughs are inherently evil.

• ·         Sometimes, and I mean ONLY sometimes, and it has to be the perfect trigger (when my boyfriend annoys me) I will start talking as Jordan. He always catches on right away, which I suppose is a good thing, if it means I’ve defined the voice enough.

Ok, I’m done rambling, I swear. I’ll get back to my chapter now.